Category: VR

When creating experiences for Immersive Virtual Reality, there are essentially two approaches. The first one of these is manual construction through Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI), and is how most games and VR experiences are made. The second approach is far more automatic and attempts to ‘capture reality’ instead of actively generating it. It is this approach that we will discuss in this entry. In addition to presenting the technicalities of the methods of capture, we will also discuss its limitations, and provide an innovative example of how these can be solved in the future, drawn from a student project at the University of Bergen.

An early 360° camera — horisontally at least — probably the first with a synchronised shutter.

360° Video

In a previous article on Virtual Reality Journalism, we discussed how 360° 3D cameras can be used to present a user to an immersive experience. This approach has several unique benefits. First of all, it is far less time-consuming to capture and re-use already existing physical environments, instead of spending time creating it through 3D modelling. The same is perhaps especially the case when the environment involves any human actors, as it easier to avoid the uncanny valley effect and simultaneously maintain high standards of realism when using image capture equipment, than it is to create it with 3D animation.

How does it work?

360° cameras usually comprise two or more (ultra-)wide angle lenses. In the case of cameras with just two lenses, such as the GEAR 360 or Ricoh Theta V, each of these lenses then have to be able to capture 180° degrees horizontally and vertically. The recordings from these lenses, when raw straight from the camera, are separate — and need to be stitched together with software (for instance) an equirectangular view to compose a spherical view of 360° (See Illustration 2). Illustration 1 illustrates how the equirectangular format works, in the format of a world map, perhaps our most relatable example of spherical / global shapes presented in the format of rectangles.

Illustration 1: A relatable example of the equirectangular format. The furthest point west is close to the furthest point east, and as such we deal with a ‘sphere’, or more rightly globe, that is stretched out to a rectangle. The closer we get to the poles, such as Antarctica, the more the image is stretched, as the circumference of the earth is lesser at the poles.Illustration 2: In this equirectangular photo, captured with a Ricoh Theta V, we see the same effect as in Illustration 1. My hands, which enclose the bottom of the camera, are given the same effects as Antarctica in the map. The stairs, however, which appear to be circular are straight, but it’s bending by the lenses are especially clear when viewing it ‘equirectangularly’.

When an equirectangular image is viewed through an HMD or a smartphone, the software selects only about 110° of 360° of the image, relying on the sensors in the HMD or phone on which degrees of the image to present.

3D Images

Although regular 360˚ cameras (GEAR VR; Ricoh Theta V) to a large extent cover the world as we see it in all it’s 360°, their images are still monoscopic. Essentially, this means that the same image is presented to each eye when viewed in a HMD, and this is not the way we ordinarily see reality. As our eyes are distanced by a centimeter or two, the visual feed slightly varies in its capture of reality. It is this which enables us to perceive the depth of the world, that is, when our eyes are not fooled by illusions exploiting this effect, such as VR itself. We discuss this in more detail in our entry on the History of VR, in which we discuss the invention of the Stereoscope, but a small introduction will also be given in this entry. Essentially, 3D 360˚ cameras utilise the same feature as human beings to capture depth, by separating the cameras similarly to that of the human eye. Such cameras are, however, more cumbersome and costly to produce, and to capture stereoscopic images one needs to double the minimum of lenses — leading to a minimum of four lenses —two for each eye for each 180˚ of capture. Unlike the 4K 360˚ monoscopic cameras available rather cheaply at the commercial market (from $200 and up), stereoscopic cameras have not entered the market at very reasonable prices yet. There is hope, however, and I can personally recommend Vuze+, a 360˚ 3D camera that deliver 4K resolution per eye, and comes with a well-designed acommpanying stitching- and editing software. The price is still a bit stiff for most non-professional use, at $1200, but it brings hope for future technology that these can soon be more affordable. We have used the Vuze+ camera in a research project at the University of Bergen, with good results. It is comparable to the quality of a Ricoh Theta V — except that it delivers the stereoscopic images rather than monoscopic ones.

Regarding Resolution

Unfortunately, a resolution of 4K per eye sounds great — and many are dissapointed when they view the recordings of a camera such as GEAR VR, Ricoh Theta, or the Vuze+. They may recall their images on their 4K TV as incredibly sharp, and yet, their recorded videos appear somewhat blurry and pixelated. The answer to why this is the case is quite simple. The 360˚ images do indeed have a 4K resolution, however, we are unable to view all the pixels at a time as they are stretched out on a sphere. To keep matters simple, let’s say that your Head-Mounted Display has a Field of View of 90˚ (although most have 110˚). In this case, just 1/4 of the 4K image is being seen at any given time. Thus, we will have to divide the pixel count by four. This is somewhat simplified because of stretching, but it should be enough to get the point. To get an effective resolution of 4K, or something akin to 3K such as the HTC Vive Pro and Samsung Oddysey(+) can afford, one would need a far higher resolution of the cameras.

Another Step in Fidelity: Volumetric Video

At first thought, it may perhaps be hard to imagine how we can proceed to more details in immersive 360˚ 3D recordings except by increasing the resolution. As we briefly commented, however, stereoscopics in 3D movies at the cinema, or in 360˚ 3D recordings merely provide an illusion of depth — not actual depth. The same goes for our eyes, although they mostly perceive it correctly, they are easily fooled. 360˚ 3D cameras is an example of this, they merely fool our eyes: although it seems that there is depth, we can not really move in the image — as there is no actual depth to it. Here, volumetric video acts differently, and affords positional interaction. Volumetric video attributes the recorded images in a 3D (x,y,z) space, in addition to delivering stereoscopy so that we can perceive it. Volumetric video is unfortunately very hard to create while still retaining high quality, and plug-and-play solutions still seem far off. To get an idea of how volumetric video works, we recommend to look into the concepts of photogrammetry — and perhaps even to create a 3D model yourself, using images captured with your smartphone. This YouTube tutorial shows you how to do this in Agisoft Photoscan Pro, which has a free trial available.

Limitations

Developed in an undergraduate course at the University of Bergen, the short 360 movie “Schizophrenia“, experimented with interactive 360 video.

Despite these great innovations in the capture of reality, CGI has some benefits that neither 360˚ 3D or Volumetric videos can really achieve. The most important of these is that of interactivity . As 360° videos are linear (that is, they have a predetermined beginning and end), the user can not really affect what happens in the video — except by choosing which degrees of the video to see.

In our course in VR Journalism at the University of Bergen where I taught students VR programming, 360° video and photogrammetry — we faced this exact limitation. A group that worked on providing an experience of the reality-shattering disorder of Schizophrenia, wanted hallucinations to occur when the user viewed at certain areas. The students solved this by placing transparent gifs over the video in A-Frame, edited based on the real footage, and put gaze event listeners to activate the playing of the gif. The results were extraordinary, and could well provide a new way to provide a means of simpler interaction on top of 360° videos. The experience, which voices are in Norwegian, can be viewed here (WebVR browser such as Chrome is necessary).

Samsung Odyssey+: going beyond the nasty grid of the SDE, and into something nicer — apparently.

N.B: This blog entry is in Matrise’s category “Lights”, which holds more technical, often smaller posts, that concern actual and recent events. These entries stand out from other entries at Matrise, which are often more conceptual, ideal and philosophical. You can read about Matrise here.

This week, Samsung gave notice on their new Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) Headset, the Samsung Odyssey+. Priced very reasonably at $500, like it’s predecessor the Samsung Odyssey, the Head-Mounted Display (HMD) is a very attractive option for those who value high resolution in HMDs (and who doesn’t — it is obviously a desirable trait to have a greater fidelity of the virtual world!) The market has also shown its hunger for high-resolution displays, which the Kickstarter for the Pimax 8K and 5K HMD’s have shown. When on the topic of hi res displays, resolution strumpets should also check out StarVR, a high-res 210-degree Field of View HMD with integrated eye tracking to provide foveated rendering, which can be especially fruitful with that intense FOV. Digression aside — the Odyssey+ is now already for sale in the US, and in this entry we will discuss why it can be an alternative way to experience a higher resolution.

New Features

The Odyssey+ features the same high resolution of 1400 * 1600 per eye as its predecessor. For reference, this is the same resolution as found in the HTC Vive Pro which cost far more (priced from $1098 — $1399 with two controllers and base stations). Unlike the Vive Pro, however, the Odyssey+ features inside-out tracking similar to what is used in other WMR HMD’s, and also the upcoming Oculus Quest. None of this is any news, however, as all of this could equally be said of the original Odyssey. The new feature they are releasing, which makes this a particularly HMD, is a technology they have called ‘Anti SDE’ — that is, a technology that seeks to eliminate the ‘Screen Door Effect‘ experienced in most HMD’s today.

An illustration by Samsung that attempts to illustrate the difference between the Odyssey and the Odyssey+.

Screen Door Effect

The screen door effect occurs when a user is to perceive the physical space or room between the pixels themselves. This is of course not ideal for realism, as it becomes apparent that what you are viewing is a screen. The new Odyssey+ features a technology that diffuses the light from the pixels in between the pixels, to eliminate the SDE. Their press release stated:

“Samsung Anti-SDE AMOLED Display solves SDE by applying a grid that diffuses light coming from each pixel and replicating the picture to areas around each pixel. This makes the spaces between pixels near impossible to see. In result, your eyes perceive the diffused light as part of the visual content, with a perceived PPI of 1,233PPI, double that of the already high 616PPI of the previous generation Samsung HMD Odyssey+ [sic].”

RoadToVR report that they suspect this is the technology that Playstation VR has used in their own HMDs. The Playstation VR, with a resolution of only 1080p on the eyes combined, has surprisingly little SDE — which has made me prefer the display to the Vive regular or Oculus, albeit the tracking and computing power is vastly inferior. I’m therefore eager to see how this would work on a HMD with a lot more of the pixels.

Conclusion

Technologies such as low pixel persistence modes,asynchronous timewarp and foveated rendering are all genius technologies that enables perceived higher refresh rates than what our computers are capable of, some of which are indispensable especially for mobile VR. Anti-SDE technology may be yet such another technology, that may make it not so necessary to have 16K displays or whatever for VR to be perceived as very close to real human sight. That being said, although Samsung claims that their new HMD have a perceived PPI (pixels per inch) of 1233, it will naturally not offer the same sharpness of clarity as an actual 1233 ppi display would. The extra 50% potential increase in “perceived ppi” is only replicating, or diffusing, the already-existing pixels. Still, the tech is very welcome, and HTC also has something to learn from the way Samsung prices their products. Customers may now find a whole lot more value for their money in Samsung, and this comes from someone who already owns a Vive Pro. For those considering doing the purchase, it should be noted that the tracking is not as good as in the HTC Vive (Pro), but depending on your needs it may be more than good enough.

If we look to our glossary, we see Presence within Virtual Reality (VR) defined as the degree to which the subject feels present in the virtual world. What is interesting to note, is that this naturally has to be viewed relatively to the degree that the subject feels present in the physical world — as we usually receive information from both our physical and our virtual environments.

There can thus be two separated approaches to designing for presence in virtual reality environments: one is to provide sensory stimulus of the virtual environment, and the other is to block sensory stimulus from the physical environment. Both approaches work towards the same goal of immersion — the encapsulation of the user in the VE. Slater and Wilbur (1997) recognise this in their definition of Immersion, which is closely related to the notion of Presence. They define immersion in terms of four qualities the system can afford, the first one of which is called inclusiveness. Inclusiveness they define as the extent to which physical reality is shut out.

Obviously, the principle of adding and removing sensory experience go hand in hand; by equipping a Head-Mounted Display you are blocking the physical impressions and replacing them with virtual impressions, all the while shielding for incoming light from the surroundings. Blocking light, however, is not the only way to deprive the senses of information from the physical environment. In this entry, we will discuss how we can maximize the inclusiveness of the immersion by achieving sensory deprivation in floatation tanks. Floating in Virtual Reality!

Floatation Chambers

Floatation chambers, or sensory deprivation tanks — are pools of water with copious amounts of epsom salt (≈600kg). The tanks are sealed for any incoming light and sound, and the air- and water temperature is equal to that of your body. When you lie down, you will feel how the salt makes you float even though the pool is very shallow. As you lie there, you notice how the ripples you created when lying down start to slowly subside as you sink down into weightlessness. After a while, because of the air- and water temperatures are the same as that of your body, you can no longer pinpoint where the water ends and the air around you begins. In fact, it gets hard to distinguish anything from anything else, including your body from the air and water. There is really nothing that is easy to grasp as isolated, save perhaps your breath. And as the minutes go, with total physical relaxation and lack of much sensory impression at all, things start to change.

The most significant, explicit change one may notice in the tank is that after a while your bodily self-consciousness is not what it used to be. Your mental model of where your body is in relation to the world around you starts to become blurred. Normally reinforced by tactile stimuli of air and water (of varying temperatures), and visual and auditive stimuli from the environment, your body model is now lacking information on which to create it. Your sense of spaciousness has also changed, that is the feeling of your position as defined relatively to say, the walls, mountains and sky has disappeared. You now really experience nothing around you, but neither any edges to this lack of information in your surroundings. You may get the feeling of floating in empty space — but where are you in all of this? What, in this stream of conscious experience is matter and what is mind?

Inner vs Outer

In our entry — ‘Inner as Outer: Projecting Mental States as External Reality‘ — we discussed the potential of using VR for meditation purposes in experimental ways. In the introduction to the entry, we discussed our feeling of Self as a duality of Inner and Outer, of which our everyday experiences usually comprise. We discussed how technology may have the power to transform our consciousness away from this traditional subject-object hierarchy and into a non-dual one, where the Inner is seen as the Outer, and the Outer as Inner. In this entry we are building further on these ideas. Similarly to visualising inner states in VR through biometrics, using VR in floatation tanks might provide illusory experiences where the conscious experience is significantly altered.

One other entry relevant to our experiments with VR in floatation tanks should be mentioned before we go on: the entry on Virtual Embodiment. In the entry, we discuss the great potential of VR to hack our consciousness; why it is possible, and what it can be used for. The research is highly relevant for floatation in VR, as both floatation tanks and VR alter our self-model, as both alter the sensory impressions necessary to maintain it.

Research on Virtual Embodiment in Floatation Tanks

Matrise partnered up with Bergen Flyt, a local company offering floatation therapy in the heart of Bergen city. We used a Samsung Gear VR with a Samsung S8 phone. We did not use a HTC Vive (Pro) as it would be more risky exposing the cable to water. Also, no room tracking or even much head orientation was needed, and in terms of resolution the HMD is quite high in ppi. We chose to first try out some abstract visualisations through the application “Fractal Lounge”, that shows varying psychedelic visuals and floating through space.

My Experience

“After I had showered, I put on the GEAR VR headset, started the application, and slowly entered the floatation pool. I held my hands towards the wall, as I did not see anything else than the visuals in the headset. When I was inside, I closed the glass door, and slowly lowered myself into the water — back first. It took a few seconds before I dared to lower my head all the way down, but very soon I was totally relaxed. As expected, the electronics in the display was kept well above water, due to the intense amount of salt in the water …”

The kind of visualisations provided from Fractal Lounge, the application that was tried in the floatation tank.

“The visualisation pulsated, floated, drifted along — and often totally changed in colours and shapes. It took probably about ten minutes before my feeling of body totally vanished, to the degree that it was a larger gap between wanting to move the body and actually being able to move it than usual. I felt like perceiving a great drama and scene, and I got engaged in the forms and ways of the visualisations, sometimes quite invested in it, as it felt close and reality-defining for me. After about twenty minutes in, I felt as if I was drifting along in space at high speed, because of the steady movement of stars away from me. At the same time, there was no sound, which made the quick travel feel peaceful and smooth. As with normal floating, about every ten minutes there is a sort of reality-check moment where you remember you are in the tank and contemplate how weird it is. This also happened in VR, and was … equally as weird”

Reflections and Future Work

My first experiment with floatation in VR lasted for about 45 minutes. Sometimes, unfortunately, the VR headset glided slightly off my face, and I had to reposition it with my wet, salty fingers. After this happened about three times, I had to leave the tank in order to save the equipment.

Thank God that we have floatation pools instead of this creepy stuff.

My first experience of floating in virtual reality was very promising. The largest surprise was the feeling of movement through space at high speed. The largest frustration was the lack of any sort of interaction with ones surroundings at all, except the possibility to open and close one’s eyes. A great experiment would be to use eye tracking technology as a way of navigation in the vast, abstract psychedelic spaces. If one travelled towards where one saw, one could even be interactive while lying still in the floatation tank. This could also possibly have curious effects on which parts (perhaps the eyes), we identify with our selves. Perhaps the placement of our self could be altered by changing the agency for transportation.

Matrise will continue the cooperation with Bergen Flyt, and both try and develop different applications. Our plan is to measure the feeling of presence and self-identification and consciousness while in the tank.

Although Matrise usually cover the more encapsulating technologies on the Reality-Virtuality-Continuum, we are also very interested in innovative uses of all Extended Reality (XR) technologies. In this entry we will illustrate the utility of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies with an exciting project we are presenting at this years IBC conference in Amsterdam.

Short History of AR

AR has seen a similar hype as VR have with products as Microsoft Hololens, Magic Leap and the Google Glass. The technology concept has, similarly to VR, the power to change our orientation towards reality — however, AR technology lets you see your surroundings in addition to the augmented virtual phenomena. We discussed its historically conceptual origins previously in our entry on the Camera Lucida, but apart from this case — the technology is somewhat younger than VR technology.

The first Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display, named after the Sword of Damocles, because of its great weight hanging over the user’s head. Named after an old greek cultural symbol of Mortality — the anecdote is that the sword hung from a single horse hair over the head of Damocles after he rose to wealth.

In our History of VR we mentioned ‘The Sword of Damocles’ as the first thorough Head-Mounted Display. It should be noted, however, that this essentially also was an AR display, not just VR. The glasses, as can be seen in the illustration, were somewhat see-through, and could therefore be used to augment the physical surroundings of its wearer. Today, however, we are far more privileged, and can experience sophisticated AR that let us view virtual phenomena within the environment itself hyperlocally, with extremely room tracking with six degrees of freedom in the interaction. This enables far more sophisticated usage of the technology.

AR has yet to have a commercial launch similar to that of VR. Although mobile AR with smartphones has gained some popularity, we will have to wait some more for the non-invasive affordable Head-Mounted Displays to hit the market (the Magic Leap currently costs $2295 and the Microsoft Hololens is at about $3000 for developers). That being said, it is fun to play and develop with these technologies and be part of creating new solutions with immersive technologies. Although they are not yet fit for mass-adoption, the Microsoft Hololens is a great project that illustrates the potential of these technologies.

The Microsoft Hololens: an AR Head-Mounted Display released for developers. It is believed we will see the next iteration of the HoloLens in 2019.

HoloSuite: A Mobile AR Video Editing Suite

Saturday and Sunday at IBC 2018, Joakim from Matrise is joining four masters students from media- and interaction design in presenting an AR application for the broadcasting industry. The application was developed as a student project for the Bergen-based company Vimond, and is presented at Media City Bergen’s stand at IBC’18 — to represent the fruitful collaboration of the University of Bergen with the companies in the NCE Media cluster Media City Bergen.

The masters students involved; Audun Klyve Gulbrandsen; Johanne Ågotnes and Fredrik Jenssen also has lots of other interesting projects that can be read about at their website UiB MixMaster.

The presentation takes place at 12:30 at Sat&Sun, in hall 8, at booth D10 (MCB Village).

Abstract of Presentation

«Professional video editing suites of today are resource-demanding. A video editor needs great machine power in addition to multiple screens to tackle the varying formats of today’s media landscape. Effectively, this results in reduced freedom of mobility for video editors; they are dependent on their stationary office space to work. In addition to reducing flexibility, this lack of freedom may slow down the turnaround process for news agencies.

In our presentation, we describe and demonstrate an Augmented Reality (AR) cloud-based video editing suite, where up to five virtual screens are presented to the user through a Microsoft Hololens Head-Mounted Display. By employing cloud computing, the prototype can access machine power remotely through the cloud, which has benefits in terms of mobility. Effectively, the AR application is a prototype of an office for video editors that can be carried in a backpack, and utilized wherever there is network connectivity»

Figure illustrating the timeline and the preview screens (resolution is higher, and FOV lower in the HoloLens display itself).Same content from a different angle, illustrating the fixed environmental position (resolution is higher, and FOV lower in the HoloLens display itself).

Do you have any great AR ideas? Matrise will soon publish a new entry on an AR product development process we are involved in — so stay tuned.

The most praised ability of Virtual Reality is its capability to immerse the user in a Virtual Environment — to the degree that the subject feels present in it. The magic is to be fooled by the system so that one feels present where one actually does not physically reside. This effect can, however, turn even more magical. A deeper step into the effects of technological immersion is found in the concept of Virtual Embodiment. If a subject is embodied virtually, not only is the virtual environment accepted as such; the subject also identifies with a virtual body or avatar inside the virtual environment. This differs from realizing which character you control in a game — within Virtual Embodiment it is the same processes that make you identify with your real body that makes you identify with a virtual one. This is a key point, as it is why research into virtual embodiment is important.

Peeling layers of the onion: VR can be a tool to discover who we are, through investigation of what and how we identify with our bodies. Illustration: “Mask of Day by Day” by Paulo Zerbato.

Hacking and Experimenting with Consciousness

What is fascinating about both of these possibilities of illusion, then — is how, and that, they are possible at all. Knowledge on how to achieve such immersion is obviously relevant for all VR developers, but the knowledge that can be obtained by researching these phenomena goes far beyond knowing how to apply it in VR technology. By creating experiments in VR, we can generate, and investigate, phenomenas of the mind under various experimental conditions. Exploring Virtual Embodiment, for instance, can enable us with a better understanding of our self-consciousness and the relationship between body and mind. Because of this wider span, research on Virtual Embodiment attracts neuroscience researchers, psychologists, information scientists and philosopher’s alike.

The Rubber Hand Illusion

The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is an excellent example of the kind of ‘brain hacks’ that can be achieved by sensory manipulation. The illusion, as illustrated below, is a perfectly simple experiment that does not even require the use of VR technology to perform. The RHI was introduced by Ehrson, Spence & Passingham (2004) and has been an ingenious way to illustrate how we identify with our bodies. More importantly for this entry, the results of the experiment has inspired further research on Virtual Embodiment.

Illustration from Thomas Metzinger’s book “The Ego Tunnel: The Science of The Mind and The Myth of the Self”

In the RHI, the hand of the subject is replaced by a rubber hand, while the normal hand is blocked from sight by a separating wall. When the subject is sitting as such, a researcher will stroke each hand, both the rubber and the physical hand, simultaneously. Now, the question is what happens when experiencing the sensory impression of stroking, all the while seeing a corresponding stroke on the rubber hand?

Put very simply, the brain does a ‘reasonable guess’ that this hand is indeed the correct physical hand attached to your body. You feel that the rubber hand is yours, with nerve-endings and all — and you couple your physical feelings to the vision of the hand. This means that in your subjective experience, the rubber hand is the hand that has the sensation. Ehrson et. al write that their results suggested that “multisensory integration in the premotor cortex provides a mechanism for bodily self-attribution”. When our brains receive sensory information from two differing sensory inputs (sight+feel), these are coupled: the brain is coupling the stroking-sensation with imagery of a nearby-hand being stroked, and this is enough for the brain to attribute its self with the hand, to acknowledge it as its own.

This simple experiment share a lot of principles with the concept of Virtual Embodiment, and has inspired research in the field that we will present in this entry.

Some experience out of body experiences (OBEs) on the onset of sleep or waking up. Often they may feel that they are floating over their bodies. VR may help to study such states of consciousness by systematically inducing them.

Virtual Body Illusion

In a later experiment by Lenggenhager et.al (2007), not only the hands of the subjects — but their whole bodies were replaced with virtual representations. Moreover, in the experiment they present, the bodies are seen from behind. In effect, they were simulating out-of-body experiences, with very interesting results.

The experiment was conducted as such: the subjects wore a Head-Mounted Display which projected imagery from a camera located behind the subjects. As such, the subjects could see a representation of their bodies “live”, but from behind. Of course, this is deviating slightly from how we normally experience life. Although the subjects saw their body responding and performing actions in real time as under normal conditions — there is a logical dissonance due to the mismatch between the location of the subjects’ eyes in the virtual environment, and what these eyes see. Effectively, the user is seeing inside a pair of “portal” binoculars (HMD), which display the light from, if not another dimension, then at least a few feet away. And this will be a part of the point.

What is interesting about this experiment is not necessarily simply that the users feel present where they do not reside physically, but how the distance is only a few feet off. The users feel present right outside of their bodies. The situation is similar, the body and the environment is there, but everything is a bit off. What is interesting to investigate then, is how the body adapts to this. Will it accept that it now controls its body from a third person perspective, similarly to how Stratton’s subjects got used to seeing the world upside down?

What they studied was basically whether this change of perspective had an impact on where the users felt embodied. To investigate this, the researchers stroked the subjects as they did in the Rubber Hand Illusion, except at their backs — so that it was perceivable by them. The question is then where this physical feeling will be attributed to — how will the phenomena of the subjective experience present themselves to the subjects?

Out of Body experiences can be achieved virtually by using sensory impressions from other locations, for instance five meters behind you as in the experiment by Ehrson (2007). You can then effectively look at yourself from the outside.

First of all, to be clear on this — the sensory data of being stroked will initially be provided by the nerves in the physical shoulder of the user. The problem of the brain, however, is that the shoulder is out of sight — blocked by the Head-Mounted Display. There is, however, the visual impression of a shoulder on a person standing in front — being scratched in exactly the same way. Although the nerve-endings definitely feel the stroking, the problem is that where this feeling will be placed in our subjective experience is not the responsibility of the shoulder, but rather the brain. And, as the placement of the physical feeling in the bodily self-consciousness is largely dependent on vision for coordinates, what will happen? How will the brain fix this sensory discord?

In this beautifully written article by The New Yorker, its author Rothman describes one of the co-authors of the research paper, Thomas Metzinger’s, own experience undergoing the experimental conditions:

“Metzinger could feel the stroking, but the body to which it was happening seemed to be situated in front of him. He felt a strange sensation, as though he were drifting in space, or being stretched between the two bodies. He wanted to jump entirely into the body before him, but couldn’t. He seemed marooned outside of himself. It wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience, but it was proof that, using computer technology, the self-model could easily be manipulated. A new area of research had been created: virtual embodiment.”

“Are We Already Living in Virtual Reality?” — The New Yorker has a brilliant, long, read on Virtual Embodiment that features interviews with VR and Consciousness researchers Prof. Mel Slater and Prof. Thomas Metzinger.

Phantom Pain

Another curious potential effect of Virtual Embodiment, is the possibility of phantom sensory impressions as well. Handling virtual objects while being embodied, for instance, may convince your body to expect pain or touch — and so this is, somehow, actively generated. Because of this, VR may be a way to study how phantom pain is created, and further how it can be alleviated. For instance, several studies show how VR can embody a subject missing a leg in a body with two legs, similarly to traditional mirror therapy treatment, which is effective in reducing phantom pain. Again — what may be most interesting here is the possibility of systematically creating the phenomena and studying it afterwards. For instance, as Metzinger is quoted on in The New Yorker’s article, it may be supposed that phantom pain is created by a body model not corresponding to the physical reality. This will be the case for phantom pain in VR: it is not based on the physical reality, you are only relating to a virtual reality instead. Similarly, those those with real phantom pain may also be relating to a certain kind of “virtual reality”, but rather one in the format of their skewed narratives — maintained by their minds instead of a computer.

That the narrative, worldview and consciousness that our brain’s experience and generate is often not the best match with reality is not something new. As for Matrise, these concepts reminds us of the conclusion from our three-series entry towards a metaphysical standpoint on VR, in which we discussed VR as rather examplifying of our abstracting tendencies of mind. These entries can be read at Matrise, and were called: 1) On Mediums of Abstraction and Transparency, 2) Heidegger’s Virtual Reality, and 3) The Mind as Medium.

Virtual Embodiment for Social Good

Now that we have discussed the concept of Virtual Embodiment, it may be natural to discuss what this knowledge can be used for. As discussed already, generating experiments in VR that hacks our self models, may provide useful knowledge on the structure of our self-consciousness. Apart from this general knowledge, some may also have practical utilisation in applied VR for specific scenarios.

Racial Bias

A very exciting paper that describes work utilizing virtual embodiment, is one by Banakou, Hanumanthu and Slater. In the project, they embodied White people in Black bodies, and found that this significantly reduced their implicit racial bias! The article can be found and read in its entirety here (abstract available for all).

Domestic Violence

Another interesting project by Seinfeld et. al, is one in which male offenders of domestic violence became embodied in the role of a female victim in a virtual scenario. At first in the experiment, the male subject is familiarized with his new, female, virtual body and the new virtual environment. When the body ownership illusion, or virtual embodiment, has been achieved, a virtual male enters the room and becomes verbally abusive. All this time, the subject can see his own female body reflected in a mirror, with all his actions corresponding to his. After a while, the virtual male starts to physically throw around things and start to appear violent. Eventually it escalates and he gets closer into what feels like the subjects personal space, and appear threatening.

They write:

“Our results revealed that offenders have a significantly lower ability to recognize fear in female faces compared to controls, with a bias towards classifying fearful faces as happy. After being embodied in a female victim, offenders improved their ability to recognize fearful female faces and reduced their bias towards recognizing fearful faces as happy”

N.B: This entry lies at the centre of Matrise’s interests, and we are planning on writing several entries on this topic further in philosophical directions. Have any ideas or want to contribute? Please contact us.

Introduction to Mysticism

Within Mysticism, the merging of Self and World — Inner and Outer — is seen as the utmost aim. Mysticism can be found within most of the world religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam — and its aim is often formulated as union with God. Depending on the religion, however, the degree to which Mysticism is the common way of practicing the religion varies. Although many religions have such contemplative practices, they are not always adopted by the religion’s followers at large.

When discussing «Union with God», it should be noted that the term «God» varies in its meaning between these religions. The contemplative practices often have significantly varying metaphysics, for instance Monotheistic (Christianity), Polytheistic (Hinduism), and relatively Atheistic or Agnostic (Buddhism). Be this as it may, their descriptions of the experience of this merging of Self and God is often strikingly similar. These states of enlightenment are often described as ecstatic, in which the conscious experience can not be placed within our normal frames of language or understanding.

What also unites the different traditions, is that such states of consciousness is usually worked towards through contemplative practice such as yoga, meditation or other disciplines of focus or conscious attention. Other techniques for achieving these ecstasies have have been ascetic ones, such as fasting, waking, isolation — or other ways of stirring the Self to war.

The experience of seeing the Inner as Outer, and the Outer as Inner, is often described as the feeling that living itself is an experience of seeing and perceiving Oneself and/or God. Within this worldview, there is no Self relating to anything external.

Non-duality: synchronization of Inner & Outer

The concept of merging Inner and Outer, or Self and God, can each be viewed either in very material or spiritual terms. Although materiality and spirituality do not have to differ metaphysically, separating these gives us some communicative benefits — and Mysticism may be explained and spoken of from both these perspectives. Discussing the Inner as Outer purely «scientifically», if you will, makes sense in that all our perceptions of the Outer world is indeed created Inner, and as such — Reality will always be a synergy of Inner and Outer. We know that we do not see, or have ever seen, anything which we ourselves do not actively generate. As neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Anil Seth put it, “our brains are actively hallunicating our conscious reality”.

States where a subject experiences the Inner and Outer as ‘one’, is often referred to as «non-dual». Often while speaking of Inner and Outer, we tend to implicitly reinforce the Self and the World as a duality (when pitching a solution we often have to pitch the problem first). By using the word «non-dual» instead of ‘one’, we may pinpoint the nuance that it is not a duality in separation, but neithercompletely “same-same”. Although it is non-dual, neither is it all same or flat — least of all static!

Although we classify and divide our reality, fundamentally what we perceive is a stream of experience, which in every sense is simply “reality” before divided, and, again, actively created by us. This is not to say that there are no external reality or world — but it definitely is to say that all which is external is perceived first and foremost, solely, internally. Experientially — externality has never been perceived, except as a subcomponent of internality.

A vase, or two faces? Each defines the other, and neither exist without the other.

Experiencing and Sensing the Non-Dual

This causal explanation, however, leaves out the experiential aspects of the non-duality. Although it may make sense on paper, it matters little to us as we absolutely perceive the world as dual — as subjects relating to a World. Within Philosophy, this traditional way of adhering to and speaking of the world, is referred to as the subject-object dichotomy. Although, between different cultures and continents, the degree to which we adhere to this way of thinking vary in its intensity, it is nevertheless definitely an essential part of the human experience which we share.

How the material explanation can be said to be different from the spiritual in this sense, is that the spiritual concern is to experience the Inner as Outer, not to understand it cognitively. As such, and towards that, meditation practices such as Mindfulness and Yoga have existed, to increase wellbeing by increasing the degree to which one feels in union with God, or for those who do not fancy the term; to the degree which one has peace with oneself and the world.

Contemplative practices such as yoga and meditation, has the last fifty years become more popular in western societies. Although they have been subject to a certain degree of metaphysical raffination the last years, these methods are nevertheless largely old and traditional. The most common of these contemplative practices we see today is adopted from the Vippassana practice, commonly known as Mindfulness. These methods are now commonly used in psychological treatment of anxiety and depression, and research has the latest years started to uncover the benefits of learning to be able to sit quietly with your mind and, well, deal with shit, or seeing it for what it is.

In the next section, we will discuss an approach utilizing Virtual Reality to aid in Mindfulness meditation — which can help to perceive the Inner as Outer.

A common belief is that the aim of contemplative practices is to empty the mind. In a sense, it can be said to be correct, in that meditation practices often seek to eradicate, dilute or cancel the self-referential narratives.

The effects of Mindfulness meditation

The essence of Mindfulness or similar contemplative practices, lie in their manipulation of identity. We stated “the problem” of Mysticism as the gap between Self and Other — and for this separation to be there, we must necessarily have a relatively thoroughly defined sense of self. For most of us, this tend to be limited to the cognitive processes that constitute our mental narrative (the personalized voice in our heads, our formulated will, and how it appears to direct our actions and plans our lives). It is actually to a far lesser extent our bodies, although this also attributes to our self-consciousness.

Mindfulness is about being present attentively in each moment to one’s state of mind. When doing such focus excercises directed at the mind, and observing these mental processes closely, the idea or view of them as solid things starts to unravel. When rather seeing them as thoughts from a distance, they appear untangled to us, and we perceive our own existence as distinct from those thoughts.

Virtual Reality Biofeedback as Meditation aid

One of the great benefits of VR is its ability to project and represent data in the format of the reality encompassing us. Within the context of this entry, we could say therefore that VR can simulate what we perceive as the Outer. The question may then be asked: how can we project our Inner in to this medium of Outer?

Although I believe we will see more work on VR biofeedback within this domain in the future, in this entry we will focus only on one research paper in particular to examplify our case. At last years CHI conference, the world leading conference on Human Computer Interaction, Joan Sol Roo and his colleagues presented their work on Inner Garden: a mixed reality sandbox for mindfulness. The artifact is a physical sandbox, which the user can shape to a given terrain. The sandbox is given generally visually augmented by a projector with colors and shapes — and physical changes to the sandbox will also alter the output of the projector, which deliver terrain information such as sea levels and green growth.

The sandbox is just not physical, however; by placing a physical avatar in the physical sandbox, you can enter into the land you created in Immersive VR. A 3D-model of the land you created physically can be seen virtually, from the viewpoint of your placed avatar.

The Sandbox, which heights of the sand have been turned into an island by the projector.

Attached, to measure your inner states, is both breathing- and heart rate sensors — which are coupled to provide visual and auditive feedback. In this way, you can synchronize your breath to control the environment and rythm and breaking of the waves. The Inner Garden represents your inner state, and. by practicising breathing techniques, the flora of your world will get greener and more animals will appear.

In this way, Inner Garden works as a great example of representing Inner phenomena as External Reality. Very conceptually interesting, and hopefully one day we will also see empirical studies on similar artifacts.

You can read more about Inner Garden, which received an honorable mention at CHI’17, here.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas for VR applications using biofeedback? Please comment below.

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has finally reached the masses. 2016 was called “The Year of VR” as several actors released their Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) on the consumer market. While HTC, Oculus and Playstation delivered high quality HMDs that require external computers to run, the year also opened up for high quality mobile VR. Both Google with their Daydream View and Samsung/Oculus with their GEAR VR have provided an easier step for consumers to enter the world of VR. These mobile VR solutions offer better internal measurement units than the simpler Cardboard devices, and also feature simple controllers for interaction. We now see the market spreading out both in quality and accessibility: in 2018 we have both seen the coming of the HTC Vive Pro, a more expensive high-end HMD with increased resolution, and the Oculus Go, which is a reasonably-priced ($200) stand-alone 3DOF (3 Degrees of Freedom) HMD for the starters.

It is natural to wonder how all of this started. Why did we for instance not see much VR before 2016? When it now seems to be relatively easy for commercial actors to push out HMDs down to $200, why did it not happen sooner? Of course, we have had Oculus’ development kits since 2013 — but even this is very recent. When Google released their Cardboard (a simple HMD made out of cardboard and some lenses), it seemed incredilous that VR could be attainable for the smartphone for only 50 cents. This, however, only points us toward how fascinatingly simple the underlying pinciples of VR technology actually are.

In this entry, we will trace the VR tech we see today back to its roots. We will go back about two hundred years, and work ourselves jumpingly forward to the very recent innovative technologies.

Stereoscope

A drawing of the Lothian Stereoscope, released in 1895; one of many different models.

In 1838, Sir Charles Wheatstone developed what would be the first Stereoscope. Even before the camera was invented, people were seeing (drawn) images with 3D effect through stereoscopes. Stereoscopy, that is, perceptory illusion of depth, is achieved by displaying a slightly different segment of an image to each eye. Wheatstone achieved this by separating the two images by a piece of wood, and providing a lens directing the light, between each eye and the corresponding image. While looking through the stereoscope, our brains perceive the two images as one image, with the added 3D effect due to the varying segments of the images. This effect is simply caused by an utilization of how our eyes and brain work, by combining the sensory data from each eye into one. We may, for instance, most likely be able to recall sometimes «seeing double», when our brains have yet not our varying visual impressions.

Since Wheatstone, different stereoscopes have been produced all the way up to the Google Cardboard or other HMDs; which instead of drawn images, or later photographs, utilizes a screen to deliver the imagery to the eyes. Actually, in the early 1900s, Stereoscopes functioned as home entertainment devices, and «stereo cards» such as the image seen below could be purchased from photography companies.

Stereo card of St. Peters Church in the Vatican. Such cards, picturing tourist attractions all over the world, could be purchased and viewed at home in a Stereoscope.

Stereoscopes and modern day Virtual Reality HMDs share the essential feature of stereoscopic depth illusion (3D). Apart from that, however, a lot has obviously happened since 1838, which we now regard as essential for the feeling of presence and realism, and which makes the technology capable of simulating realities. The most important of these have been moving images, 3D environments, interaction, and 360 degrees of orientation. With the stereoscope, images very static in every sense.

Sensorama

In the mid 1950s, however, some people saw the opportunity to spice up their stereoscopes a bit. A bold attempt at enrichening this, was the Sensorama. In addition to providing a stereoscope with motion pictures in 3D and color, all quite revelutionary, the device had fans for simulating wind, odor transmitters for smell of the environment, stereo sound, and even a moving chair!

The Sensorama, or «Experience Theather». Illustration from Morton Heilig’s 1962 US Patent.

Pygmalion’s Spectacles

The idea of the Sensorama, or VR in general, can as many other innovative future-defining ideas, be found in science fiction literature. Before its conception, in the 1930s, the science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum introduced the idea of «Pygmalion’s Spectacles». By wearing these, the user could experience a fictional, or virtual world, with holographs, smell, taste and touch, and make the virtual come alive. Pygmalion, which «Pygmalions Spectacles» were named after, were a Greek sculptor who fell in love with his sculpture, and so begged Venus that it would come alive. The Myth sheds an interesting light on VR as an ultimate dream of humanity, to create realities for ourselves to inhibit, or to create images in the format of reality.

Pygmalion, which «Pygmalions Spectacles» were named after, were a Greek sculptor who fell in love with his sculpture. He begged Venus that it would come alive. Painting by Jean-Baptiste Regnault.

Information Technology

To take a leap towards another paradigm shift in VR tech, we must enter the land of 1s and 0s. The Stereoscope slowly moved from drawn images, to photographs, and further to moving images with the Sensorama. None of these, however, supported spherical environments that could be perceived in all their 360˚. To achieve this, certain sensors and further computation based on their sensory input has been necessary. The most important and interesting of these sensors, has been the Gyroscope.

The Focault Gyroscope, created by physicist Jean Bernard León Focault.

The Gyroscope was given its name by Phycisist Jean Bernard León Focault in 1852 who used the device as a means to prove the rotation of the Earth. The gyroscope is a device consisting of a spinning top with a pair of gimbals. Its origin can not be traced to a single invention or inventor, as tops have originated in many ancient civilizations — however, unlike the «complete» Gyroscope, these were not necessarily used as instruments. Although Focault’s gyro were not the first that were used as a measuring instrument, its affordances work well to examplify the usefulness of gyroscopes in VR HMDs; the important feature it affords is the measure of rotation, which key lies in the Gyroscope’s tops’ possibility for free rotation.

Gyroscopes are fun artifacts to play with as they seem to defy gravity. While spinning, they can remain stable in most positions. If placed on a platform, that unlike the gyro remain stable, the position in terms of rotation can be measured relatively to the platform, and as such we can also measure the rotation of a HMD. It should be noted, however, that the gyroscopes of today are not pretty mechanical objects of brass anymore, which, although they do no longer satisfy our aesthetic appetite, at least have the benefit of fitting into our smartphones and HMDs. Today, gyroscopes have heights, widths and lengths of only millimeters, which opens the possibility for placing them inside smartphones and HMDs.

The Sword of Damocles

The Sword of Damocles, an old greek cultural symbol of Mortality — ever close to those in power. We see the sword hanging from a single horse hair over the head of Damocles.

Fifty years ago, in 1968, Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull created the first computer-driven stereoscopic (3D) Head-Mounted Graphical Display with 360˚ head-tracking. The HMD was not exactly lightweight, and was named after the «Sword of Damocles» because of the heavy stand hovering over its users head. As can be seen in the illustration below, the head-tracking was mechanical, and did not in fact use a Gyroscope. Later, however, this became a more fruitful approach, so as to avoid the massive device rotating over the users head.

The field of view and graphical fidelity of the Sword of Damocles were obviously quite low, yet the Sword of Damocles is the first widely known HMD, and has since its dawn inspired and launched further decades of VR research.

The first Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Display, named after the Sword of Damocles, because of its great weight hanging over the user’s head.

Towards the modern HMD

Since the invention by Sutherland and Sproull, creation and use of HMDs was seen more and more within research. As computational power became faster and cheaper, the HMDs decreased in size, and increased in field of view, graphical fidelity and refresh rates. Yet — even back in the 1990s for instance, the technology was still expensive, and poor in terms of graphical realism. It often caused cybersickness due to low refresh rates, and high motion to photon latency. Of this reason, as with any really powerful computer from that time, VR was reserved for research universities that could invest into the technologies, or businesses with resources to experiment with the technology. There were some attempts at commercializing VR for gaming purposes, such as the SEGA Genesis and Nintendo Virtual Boy — however, both of these remained largely as prototypes and were later discontinued. To this day, none of these companies has since experimented with the technology, although Nintendo in 2010 released the Nintendo 3DS which utilizes a stereoscopic display that does not require any glasses.

Image of a 3D model of the HTC Vive Pro.

Conclusion

Since the Sword of Damocles, VR technology has undergone small incremental changes leading to where we are today, mainly as a result of general computer and graphics research, and the natural progression of Moore’s Law; today our processors are smaller and more powerful, and our screens of higher resolution.

In addition to this, however, there are certain very recent technologies that have impacted the VR as we know it today as well. In Matrise’s glossary, we briefly present and define some of these technologies. Some that can be read about is Foveated Rendering and Low Pixel Persistence Modes.

Did we miss anything? Any thoughts are welcome in the comments section.

The most essential feature of VR is its ability to simulate what is not real. This is its core concept, and what causes its radical exclusivity and novelty. The benefits of ‘avoiding reality’ in this sense, is most often that virtuality is more cost-effective than reality. For instance, corporations worldwide train their employees in VR as it saves money to avoid renting a physical location and hiring physical trainers. ‘Money’ in this case, is of course just a measure of effectivity: it takes less resources to achieve certain objectives virtually than physically. The cost is not the only benefit, however; the virtual may also be safer. We see this especially within surgery, where a failed operation on a virtual patient is much preferred than on a real one.

Exposure TherapyAnother scenario where virtuality may be preffered is psychological treatment of anxiety disorders. Anxiety is a terrible disorder in the way it is eating away the lives of the sufferers, and is hard to treat to by non-addictive pharmaceutical medicine. Psychological treatment, however, is in general very successful towards certain anxiety disorders. Agoraphobia, arachnophobia, glossophobia, etc., can be treated by what we call “exposure therapy”.

Under exposure therapy, the patient usually get together with a psychologist, and is asked to express their fears of the situation of exposure. Here they answer what they think will happen, and how they think they will react. Their fears are pinpointed, and their catastrophic thinking is outlined. In these cases, it is not uncommon that patients believe they will literally stop breathing, or die, etc.: the narrative which operates is something they buy heavily in to, and the key of exposure therapy is to challenge their acceptance of this narrative. To a certain extent, this is a central problem of anxiety disorders: patients very seldom challenge these fears, of obvious reasons, and so their map of how the world works is not challenged and updated by reality. This is, through exposure therapy, systematized.

When the patient has been exposed to their fear scenario — the psychologist confront the patient with their initial fears that were written down prior to the exposure. The patient is then encouraged to reflect on the gap between their fears and what actually happened, something which we refer to as inhibitory learning. This kind of treatment falls under what is depicted as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); by actively challenging the patients’ mental model of the world by reflection on facts.

Long story short — exposure therapy works. The largest problem with exposure therapy is, as usual, the cost. Having highly educated psychologists dedicated to the task is expensive enough in itself — but arranging the exposure to a fear scenario is an often greater challenge, practically and economically. It is not really convenient to summon spiders into the psychologist’s office, for instance. Arranging complicated fear scenarios and executing them is not convenient, and at high cost, which is a hinder for an otherwise effective treatment.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy can be used to treat, for instance, arachnophobia (fear of spiders). If you are not afraid of spiders, you might need to increase their size. I can recommend trying Farpoint for PSVR, which features giant space spiders similar to those in this illustration by Alphonse de Neuville.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
This is where the concept of VR enters our story, as we start talking of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VREP). By using virtual environments instead of actual physical locations, effective exposure therapy can be offered to more people at lower cost. At the University of Bergen, through the research project INTROMAT, we develop and do research on VR Exposure Therapy for adolescents with fear of public speaking. The INTROMAT project aims to introduce personalized treatment of mental health problems using adaptive technology. Currently, we are working on a very exciting approach to this, which Matrise will cover in more detail later.

The question that often raises itself when we discuss the concept of VRET, is whether we can fear what we know is not real. Although we know what it is like to be nervous before talks, it is perhaps hard to imagine being afraid of speaking in front of virtual subjects in which ‘nobody’s home’. On this point, however, the research is very clear. As Lindner et. al (2017) writes, “decades of research and more than 20 randomized controlled trials show that [VRET] is effective in reducing fear and anxiety”. The reason why VRET is interesting now, today, is then not necessarily because VR is finally good enough to deliver realistic virtual scenarios. VRET has been shown to be effective with VR technologies far inferior to those setups we have commercially available today. The reason for its relevance as a research subject now, is because the technologies are finally cheap enough to successfully be used in large scale treatment. It is therefore time to revisit the previous research, and look at how this treatment can be improved further.

This is why INTROMAT now is looking at new ways of improving and investigating ‘state of the art VRET’.

N.B: This post is the third and final post in a series that comments upon a metaphysical stand towards VR technology. The entries are based upon an essay that was written for a doctoral course on the philosophy and ethics of the social sciences. The two previous post that precedes this one, are linked here: 1) “On Mediums of Abstraction and Transparency“, and 2) “Heidegger’s Virtual Reality“

3 / 3

Now that we have arrived at the final post of the series, it is time to revisit our initial problem of Virtual Reality and Authenticity. Initially, we introduced our problem as the abstracting tendencies of Information Technology, and the unique position of VR technology in this case, as it abstracts all the while displaying a high degree of transparency and coherency with the real world – while simultaneously hiding the real world as much as possible. We wanted to ask whether this was indeed a real problem, and if the technology could in effect distance ourselves from the reality of the world, and thus distance ourself from truth, or an authentic living.

An old illustration of a Stereoscope, the illusive technology responsible for 3D effects in our modern VR Head-Mounted Displays. The first stereoscope was created in 1838 by Sir Charles Wheatstone.

Discussion

After reviewing Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology”, we noticed several questions that we could use in our existential approach to our technology critique. Following the lines of Heidegger, we could say that we could have a free relationship towards VR when we know what it is. We can for instance ask whether we can see any “Enframing” tendencies of VR technologies.

In Being and Time, Heidegger’s concern for authenticity is a concern for individuality: a concern for Dasein’s possible impossibility of leading its own life: the death of authenticity. In the they-self, no individual is thoroughly relating to its Being, and so the truths and the “goings-on” that is defined “culturally” in the they-self, are in a sense accepted blindly and left unexplored: they are abstractions as they are not defined relatively to each Dasein; they are not experiential, not resolutely made up. Effectively, we are not in control when we have given ourselves up to let the they-self decide the possibilities of what we can project upon.

“The Fairies Flew Away”, by Charles Henry Bennett.

Similarly, In Heidegger’s Questioning Concerning Technology, we introduced the term of Enframing. Enframing is dangerous because we create things that enframe us, we instantiate our enframing orientation in technology. If we do not relate to technology as exactly this which it is in its essence, Enframing, we do not relate to it as it is, and so it may hinder us to perceive the world as it is. Both by relating to the agenda set by the they-self, or the framework set by ourselves indirectly through our enframing technology, we do not relate to the world and our active projection upon it: we do not resolutely enact our nature of actualizing the possibilities that can lead us to our authentic self.

So how is this relevant for the technology of VR? Should we interpret it as that we are not in control over our possibilities, if they are presented to us through VR, rather than in real life? Can , in this respect, VR be seen as an instantiation of the they-self, as it similarly provides abstractions, terms and conventions? If we remember to follow Heidegger deeper than the image of the problem, we may see that it is not VR that we should be afraid of. VR, like other modern technology, carries the mark of its author: and similarly we can see the creation of VR as the ultimate dream of Man. We spoke earlier of the characters of challenging-forth as inspired by the view of modern physics as an exact science: we wanted to view the world as chopped up in parts and materials that we could understand, enframe, and use as means to ends. If the dream accompanying this Newtonian metaphysic ever was lost with the rise of quantum physics, VR can certainly become the free space where man’s illusive control over the world could be rekindled: finally we have a world, not of atoms, but of bits, that we can know totally through an actual access to its source code.

We can have a free relationship towards VR, when we understand what the essence of VR is. To what is the essence of VR, we will not answer “enframing”, but rather abstraction, and more specifically, abstraction in the mode of transparency. The tendencies of abstraction, was, as with Heidegger’s technology, perhaps not inherently something technological, but something human: only technology made it obvious and explicit enough for us to see clearly. VR may perhaps be an interesting way for us to look at the real problem figuratively; the technology stands in between (medium) you and your senses, in the same way that our mental terms and classifications obscure the otherwise non-reducable reality.

To create VR is a human activity, and in VR we find much of ourselves: similarly to technology in general, we see that VR is a means to an end, and that it is an instantiation of this purpose. Sometimes, this purpose is “re-presenting” an abstraction of reality, and so it is not the genuine authentic reality itself that we see. We can therefore say that it is a human activity to create representations as means to an end, and even further, we can say that it is human to abstract, it is human to deal in images, it is human to connote terms and concepts, similarly to “putting things to boxes” in the enframing attitude of mind. With VR, these boxes are presented to us as reality, or at least in the format of reality, and the result is a realm of abstraction, a realm of representation, that blocks naturally-occurring presentation. Similarly to how Heidegger’s technology illustrated our enframing tendencies, VR may show us our desire to create our own bubbles of reality to inhibit, our own terming and associations and concepts of the self. In this respect, the essence of VR may not even be anything new. In this sense, we have created “mental virtual realities” for a long time, and the technological, the “material” expression of this does not provide anything new.

Conclusion

If we can understand the essence of VR as abstraction in the mode of transparency, and, similarly to Heidegger’s technological essence, believe that this essence is inherited from our own tendencies of mind, we will view it as such that it is human to create transparent abstractions. Through our terms, conventions, and definitions, we abstract, and through relating to these abstractions, we perceive them as real. Our thoughts and defined concepts, and the conventions we adhere to, work as our transparent user interface’s which we use to navigate the world. Our initial fear was that IT, examplified in its extreme case of VR, would act as a wall between us and the world; inhibiting a true, authentic relationship towards it. This is, however, not fundamentally something that we find in especially in a certain technology – instead, we find that when we look at this technology we are instead looking at ourselves. The mediums and interfaces that classifies and simplifies is inspired by our minds that classify and simplify. Technology is not the separation between us and the world, at least not any less than the enframing and abstracting orientation of our minds to the world are: the one mirror the other. We have thus reached a new question to replace the first, one step further on the hermeunetical spiral, and that is whether our own abstracting tendencies of mind keep us from authenticity.

N.B: This post is the second out of three, in a series that comments upon a metaphysical stand towards VR technology. The entries are based upon an essay that was written for a doctoral course on the philosophy and ethics of the social sciences. The first post, preceding this one, is “On Mediums of Abstraction and Transparency“, while the third and subsequent to this post, is “The Mind as Medium“.

2 / 3

In the previous post, we argued why existentialism was fit to explore our problem of VR authenticity. Although the post quoted several existential philosophers, we will further only go in depth into the work by Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976). Heidegger was deeply concerned with authenticity, and also discussed the role of technology in our relation to the world. Although he never lived to see the true emergence of IT, Heidegger’s 1954 essay, “The Question Concerning Technology”, discusses the essence of technology in general, and our relationship towards it.

Martin Heidegger, Portrait, Oil on Canvas.

Questioning concerning Technology

In his essay, Heidegger does not just analyse technology itself – as part of this, he writes about how the technology implicitly alters the metaphysics of our world; how technology may change ourselves and our relation to the world. In the essay, which title is “The Question Concerning Technology”, Heidegger discuss the essence of technology as it appears in our relationship towards it. The reason for his questioning concerning technology, is that he believes we can have a free relationship towards technology when we know what it is, that is, its essence. Throughout his essay, Heidegger draws a distinction between traditional technology, which is ‘bringing-forth’, and modern technology on the other hand, in which the technology is ‘challenging-forth’ in a more brutal and hacky way. It is this latter technology that Heidegger is critical towards and wishes to discuss, more “traditional” technology, such as for instance a bridge, is not an example of a technology that is challenging-forth. Heidegger for instance writes of windmills, that, though they draw energy from the wind, do not extract the energy for storage as we do with coal: the wind can still “do it’s thing”, being as-it-is, unlike coal, which for us no longer exist as-it-is; its only given meaning is being a means to our end. Through rigorous analysis, that is where Heidegger ends up: through such challenging-forth technology, our relationship towards nature is changed, as nature is interpreted only as a means towards our end, the world is no longer interpreted as it is, as it manifests.

To fully understand how Heidegger comes to this point, however, we must back up a bit. We will start “in media res” with a quote by Heidegger that is relatively concluding as to the main point of the essay, and then further navigate backwards to introduce the terms necessary to understand what he means.

Heidegger writes:

The rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.

We see then, that Heidegger’s main concern is that man may be separated from truth, a more “primal truth”, or a more “original revealing” of such. He does not say bluntly that technology threatens man with this possibility, but rather speaks of “the rule of enframing”, which will be an important term for us to understand Heidegger’s proper meaning. Throughout his essay, Heidegger builds his philosophical argument with his self-composed terms from the ground up before getting to the point, and so to understand “the rule of enframing”, we must therefore go back to thoroughly define Heidegger’s concepts of bringing-forth and challenging-forth. Both bringing-forth and challenging-forth are modes of revealing, although they differ in how and what they reveal. Heidegger’s “bringing-forth”comes from the Greek “poiesis”, which means to bring something out from concealment to unconcealment. Heidegger speaks of this revealing rather poetically, and asks the readers to imagine what is being brought forth as already “being on its way” to existence, from unconcealment to concealment; and so we can say that poeisis brings that which was not present into presence. This “revealing” or “unveiling” that happens with poeisis, Heidegger describes by the Greek word “aletheia”, literally meaning “revealing”, but which also is the Greek word for “truth”. In this way, according to Heidegger, technology can reveal truth through poeisis, although, as Heidegger points out, this is exactly what modern technology fails to do in its challenging-forth.

Bringing-forth vs. Challenging-forth

According to Heidegger, we find the difference between bringing-forth and challenging-forth in that challenging-forth treats “modern physics as an exact science”. This can be interpreted as such: modern science was on its arrival a dream come true for the human impulses to classify and understand the world: now we could understand the workings of the world according to our own scheme, and therefore also “own” them in the sense that they were perceived to be within our control. On the discovery of the atom, for instance, we finally had a graven image of the source code of reality, and we were closing in on a framework of the whole world (this was, of course, before quantum physics shattered our image of reality as something that could easily be pinned down). It is this “attitude”, according to Heidegger, which separates bringing-forth from challenging-forth: the implicit metaphysic we accepted along with the principles of Newtonian physics, that the world could be viewed as a clockwork of cause and effect, where the world is made up of manipulable materials that could serve as means to our ends.

Heidegger notes, however, that challenging-forth also reveals, but that it does not reveal truth in the same way that bringing-forth does. The point is to be found in that “the essence of [modern] technology, is not something technological”. By this, Heidegger means that technology bear a resemblance to its Maker; there is something in the essence of technology that it has inherited by us. Early in the essay, Heidegger notes that technology can be thought of both as a “means to an end”, and a “human activity”. We can therefore also say that it is a human activity to think in the context of means to ends, and it is this which technology represents to us, as in a mirror: our attitude towards the world, where everything is viewed and classified in terms of potential means to an end. Through the vision based on modern physics as an exact science, human beings view the natural world as materials for their endavours. It is a human tendency to look at the world and ask: “what is it good for?”; in the words of Albert Camus, “the world evades us when it becomes itself again”; we do not really relate to the world, but to our interpretation of it, which is an interpretation of utility or means to ends. Technology is in this respect mirroring ourselves as an expression and example of how we interpret things in light of our narrative, where things in the world fit in the degree to which they can be means to our ends. This is what Heidegger considers when he writes that the essence of technology is not anything technological, rather, its essence lies in how we approach and orient ourselves towards technology, and through technology, to the world.

With this, we are approaching the point of Heidegger’s criticism of technology: if we only interpret the world as potential means to an end of ours, we don’t really see the world as it is, or as it reveals itself. Heidegger uses the example of technology to pinpoint that it is the human aspect of technology that is dangerous about it: because we as humans are used to interpreting the world to concepts, terms and classifications, these now stand in the way as a medium or interface between us and the world. This is Heidegger’s definition of the essence of modern technology, and it is this that we shall mean by the term Enframing that we set out to define. Enframing comes from the German “Gestell”, and has associations to that of order, system or framework. It should be noted, however, that Heidegger uses it as an active verb, and so instead we talk of “ordering”, or “gathering together”, or an “enframing” of the world. Enframing is in this case a mode of human existence, it is how we navigate and present the world to ourselves, relative to ourselves.

We set out to answer what the challenging-forth reveals, as both bringing-forth and challenging-forth are modes of revealing. It is by its enframing that challenging-forth reveals, and the enframing categorizes human and machine alike, and what it reveals, it reveals as standing-reserve. The concept of standing-reserve is the utmost point of criticism for Heidegger, and is what will be discussed in the next section.

The Danger

Heidegger’s critique then, is that the attitude of enframing is dangerous. Technology as examined here, have worked to reveal this dangerous tendency in humans. The humans themselves are not safe from their orientation of enframing: the enframing of the world also include the enframing of human beings, and humans are also in this system reduced to “human resources”; the degree to which they are beneficiary resources in this system of their own creation. Enframing is the consequence of what happens when this attitude of ours is enforced and instantiated through technology; “standing-reserve” is a role that the world and its inhabitants has been given in its enframing.

This category or classification of “standing reserve” is illustratively speaking exactly of this: technology, with its essence, does not, and can not, view anything in the world “as it is”, it is only judging in terms of utility and means to ends; it is seen not as good, but good for. This is being in the standing-reserve: an airplane has no meaning or value out of itself – it is purpose incarnate, and its value is therefore only in relation to human beings and a certain activity, and so it’s role is otherwise as standing reserve. For Heidegger, however, it does not end there, as humanity is also caught up in this system of technology: the system of the world is increasingly becoming a system in which technology is heavily incorporated. Within sociology, this kind of society with non-human agents as equal affectors, has seen new theories reflecting these relationships, for instance in Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory. The theory describes one system, where technology and humans are both treated as actors in the society. Similarly, according to Heidegger, humans are equally likely to be put into standing reserve to fit this system as any other: he describes the forester as put in standing- reserve by the paper industry: his role and worth is defined there only in so much as he produces for them; when he does not, his being is one of standing-reserve, not as-he-is.

The Solution

At this part of the point, we should revisit Heidegger’s initial point of inquiry: that we inquire into technology in order to establish a free relationship to it. Heidegger is not just concerned with the existence of the technology, he is also definitely concerned with our orientation towards it, our standpoint towards it, and so our relationship with it. We initially set out to establish a free relationship towards technology, and now we see that it in fact is our relationship with the world, and the technology’s relationship to the world as well as to humans and other agents that is the issue at hand. This is a critical point, because it also means that this is not a problem that can be solved even in the extreme case choosing to discontinue technology as a whole; the essence we want to avoid comes from us. On this, Heidegger writes:

We shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.

We are limited then, in that we can not change technology in its essence. Heidegger does not want to create “better” technology: he wants to see technology for what it is, to prepare a relationship to it – and it is here that we find Heidegger’s curious path of “technological determinism”; a view that can be defined as the lack of control by humans over technology, that the development of technology is somewhat deterministic, instead of perhaps more commonly viewed as an expression of our needs through tools that we create (i.e. social constructivism). Therefore Heidegger does not want to change technology, but change our relationship towards it. The approach is almost stoic in its basic philosophy: it is only concerned with one’s own relationship to the situation, the situation itself is at any rate given. And again, the orientation which we normally have to both normal technology and to the natural world, is one of enframing. It is not just in technology, it is a human mode of being and connecting to the natural world in itself: enframing is the human tendency of categorizing the world, into objects, events, or other terms or conventions. We “frame” things in the sense that we “box” them, and this Heidegger considers to be a human activity in general, not a technological one in particular.

Heidegger does not offer a plan for humanity to solve this, but rather encourages us to stray from the enframing attitude of mind, to the more poetic: in poeisis, we can see the world as it reveals itself, not just as raw materials to be used by us. By adopting the vision of the artist, we can take part in the world instead of analysing and categorising it from the outside, indirectly alienating us from the world. Although not very specific in the approach, Heidegger is still clear on the role of action towards the problem, as he writes that “humanity is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth”.